Friday, June 28, 2013

As I lay with my baby tonight, helping him into an early bedtime (summer colds really stink!), I experienced something I haven't in a long while: the ability to focus my attentions on one child during bedtime. As both our bodies grew still, and his grew heavy with pre-sleep, my mind was free to step gingerly on the rocks across the slushy, murky Mombrain river, and arrive firmly in the land of Thought.

Once there, it began thinking of years both forward and past, island-hopping across the archipelago of Time.

First, it hopped forward, thinking of how different our life will probably be this time next year. Visions of a minivan-driving mom, a newly-minted prekindergartener, different jobs and possibly another squishy baby danced around the inside of my closed eyelids.

Then, a hop backward, considering how different our life was just a year ago, complete with images of a freshly hatched baby A, of C playing at splashpads, of us finding our bumpy way as new parents of two.

And then to a year before that: newly moved, C still a chubby-cheeked toddler-baby, M walking the line at his master's graduation, us feeling good with our progress working toward our Wishlife.

Lying there in the summer twilight, the dark rising outside our windows, I found myself grateful.

Grateful.

Later, on round two with my first baby, my mind got right back to it, this time by taking lots of hops ahead.

When the baby stirs next to us, I think about this newly-walking destined-to-be-middle child and imagine some future crisis related to him not being the oldest but not being the baby. I think how I will explain to him that his place in our family is like a peanut butter sandwich or an Oreo cookie: all the great stuff is in the middle. And I will hug him hard to squeeze out his frustrations and soften him back into the jelly that holds his brothers together.

When my oldest rolls closer to me and says "hi mom", I think about the day he will be even taller, (more) smelly, (more) farty, and (more) smarty. And the hope thumps against my heart that this boy will still announce to me, as he did right before storytime tonight, "Mom, I'm gonna come hug you and love on you!" and then come and actually do it, as he did tonight, and let me hug and squeeze him long, before shifting off my lap.

All that is uncharted territory, to be scouted and mapped as is needful.

Until then, I am hopeful. I am grateful. Most of the time, I don't know what I am doing. But I will give it my best.

I love my kids. I love my husband. I love my life. I love where we are inside of it. I hope that I'm living it to it's breadth and width and length, so that if you go to the bounds of this simple little life of mine, it is not only full up to the edges, but is slopped up onto the sides, gradually filling up so much that it's bursting at the seams.